Defeated by mud - again!

The follow-up to my last post will have to wait. I'm on holiday now.

Strictly speaking, this is my second caravan holiday of 2024, as I had a few days near Wareham in East Dorset in January, primarily to see a friend who had moved to the area. But this is the first of my regular trips. Once again, seeing that friend was a prime aim of coming to my usual farm site near Lyme Regis in West Dorset, but I was also going to do all the usual things, and generally enjoy getting out and around. But it hasn't worked out quite that way: poor weather has compromised this leg of my West Country holiday. 

I should have postponed or cancelled. It had after all been a very wet March. Such a contrast with some previous years! In 2012, for instance, March in this part of the country was gloriously warm and sunny. But of course, climate change has bitten, and damper, cloudier, rainier weather has prevailed. I didn't want to let my friend down, so I kept to plan. 

It looked like a good omen when I got away from Sussex in dry sunshine. And although there were a few showers (wintry at one point) on the way, I arrived here in sunshine. But I noted that the ground on this farm site was a little soft. Even so, Sophie manoeuvred the caravan into position without trouble. 

Overnight came a deluge. Next morning, setting off for a long day out in Exeter, Sophie slithered a bit on the grassy track from caravan to the site gate. This was despite four-wheel drive and good tyres. Hmm! Well, perhaps it would dry out over the next few hours. I went first to Sidmouth, then parked at Exmouth and caught the train into Exeter. It was at first cloudy, but with the sun peeking through often enough. But while at Exeter the heavens opened. Absolutely torrential rain. I hoped rain like it wasn't falling back at the farm!

Returning in late afternoon, I learned that the deluge had made the ground much softer. It was in fact saturated. You couldn't tell by just by looking at the grass, although there were puddles here and there that gave a clue. I pointed Sophie away from them, and drove forwards onto what seemed to be better ground. But all that happened was that my car dug herself into a pair of muddy ruts. She made a sorry sight!

There was nothing to be done but trek down to the farmhouse and get help, donning the wellies I keep in the caravan on the way. 

This had happened before, in March 2018, when I arrived at the farm towing the caravan. Colin the farmer had pulled car and caravan off with his tractor. It was only my car this time. Fortunately Colin had seen my plight, and soon drew Sophie backwards onto firm ground. I was then able to park her at the farmhouse. She was somewhat mud-spattered, but I washed it all off before settling down in the caravan for the evening.  Here's a next-day shot.

Not a great start to this part of my West Country holiday. Going anywhere has involved a muddy tramp to Sophie, changing footwear before driving off - I've had to put all the shoes and boots I am likely to wear in the car - and then the reverse procedure when coming back later. It's easily doable, of course it is, but an unwelcome palaver all the same. 

Worryingly, the ground isn't drying out as fast as I would like, and I'm expecting that three days ahead, when I must journey onwards to North Devon, and with more heavy rain forecast, the ground will have softened up again and I won't be able to pull the caravan off, at least not with Sophie. Colin has a pickup truck that will do the trick - or if necessary he can use the tractor, as he did in 2018. As this shot shows.

So this isn't an insurmountable problem.  

Nevertheless, it's all such a shame, because I'd hoped for decent weather here. And especially so, because Colin's wife Jackie has told me that he wants to retire, and they intend to sell up in 2024. The farm is going on the market shortly, and although they will continue to accept caravan bookings throughout the summer, they are closing the caravan site from 1st September. I would ordinarily have booked a week with them sometime during September, but now I can't. 

This visit in March will therefore be my last. I first came here (with M---) in 2004. Then, after a five-year gap, I came every year from 2009, most often twice a year. Twenty-seven visits in all. What a pity that the very last one has been made less than perfect by mud! 

I shall miss coming here. More: I'll need to find a substitute site in the area to pitch the caravan on. The best of these seems to be a Caravan Club main site the other side of Sidmouth, at Putts Corner. It's much closer to Honiton, Sidmouth, Exmouth and Exeter, but it will still allow me to visit magical Lyme Regis if I want to. 

And perhaps it's time to radically change how I do the West Country - especially if the other farm site I go to near Great Torrington also announces that they are selling. Change is sometimes upsetting, but it can also be stimulating: and certainly a chance to try new places. So I'm philosophical. 

Southampton's Floating Bridge

You can't go and see this one - it was replaced by the Itchen Bridge in 1977. But I took some farewell pictures in May that year, which I hope will stir fond memories in the mind of anyone who lived in Southampton at the time. For the Floating Bridge was iconic, one of the city's 'sights', apart from being much used to get from one shore to another, there being a dearth of crossing-points on the River Itchen that commuters could use.

I caught it at sunset, with the new Itchen Bridge nearing completion in the background. I drove my car at the time (a pale yellow Renault 12TL, registration JYF 844K) onto the Floating Bridge, with a friend as my passenger. She must have thought me bonkers to take pictures of something most people took completely for granted. The Floating Bridge was, to most Sotonians, as nondescript as a corporation bus. It was just an old-fashioned part of the city's infrastructure, and while not neglected, was a workaday facility that clanked to and fro across the river all day and most of the evening. It was odd to use up expensive film taking pictures of it. Bucking the attitudes of 1977, I thought otherwise. That's why I have these pictures, originally taken on Kodachrome transparency film, which certainly did cost a fair bit, and wasn't to be squandered on 'ordinary' subjects. My only regret is that I didn't possess a better camera.

See what you think.

As you can see, there were in fact two floating platforms for cars and bikes. Foot passengers sheltered in the covered side areas, where there were seats. Buses couldn't be carried, so there was a small bus terminus on each side of the river, to take passengers onward. Note the naval vessel being serviced on the Woolston side. And off to the left, the new Itchen Bridge, not yet opened, but already kitted out with street lights. We were waiting to board on the city centre side, intending to travel west-east to Woolston.

Each part of the bridge shuttled noisily between slipways, hauling itself along by chains laid across the river. 

That pale yellow car in the centre of the shot was mine. As you can see, not very many cars could be taken in one go.

The passenger accommodation, on the other hand, was generous. I imagine the Floating Bridge was built to convey mainly foot or bicycle-riding workers to one or other of the riverside shipbuilding or marine servicing businesses, long before the days of mass car ownership. So by 1977 it was, if not an anachronism, then at any rate inadequate for modern needs.

Now we had disembarked on the Woolston side, and were looking back towards the city centre. It was possible to drive almost onto the bridge, to see how near it was to being finished.

There you are. Not only street lights erected: the roadway was tarmacked, and the white lane lines had been painted on it. The new bridge was opened less than two months later, in July 1977, and the Floating Bridge became redundant.

I can't remember my precise motivation for taking these shots, but I'm very glad I did. No doubt many other Southampton residents intended to make a trip down to the Floating Bridge and get their own souvenir pictures, but I wonder how many actually found the time. It's often the case, isn't it, that one's intentions get thwarted, or something more important stops one carrying through a plan, and then the opportunity is gone forever. 

Recently, in fact on the last day of February, I went back to take a look at the Itchen Bridge in 2024, forty-seven years after it was built. It was a rainy day, and rather blustery at times too. No lovely sunset this time! 

I parked Sophie near Woolston station, and walked about, trying to recall how it had all once looked. I couldn't: so much had changed. The vicinity of the old slipway had been drastically altered by new building. That wasn't unexpected, but I couldn't fix on anything that might conjure up how it had been in May 1977, except of course the road bridge itself. I found a memorial to the old Floating Bridge though, at the entrance to a long-established riverside residential development.

There was no plaque. Younger people now living in Woolston must wonder what this commemorates!

The Itchen Bridge soared overhead, looking rather grimy. I thought I was probably trespassing, but I ventured onto the development to get a couple of shots, and see what the riverside now looked like at ground level.

The city centre skyline had changed a bit, but the immediate riverside even more so. It had lost its 'industrial' look, and the accent was on blocks of flats. Next, I climbed the steps up to the bridge itself. It had been a toll bridge from the beginning, but the manned toll booths had been mostly replaced by 'throw the money into the basket' receptacles at the barriers. I noted that double-decker buses used the bridge. Not the red-and-cream corporation buses proudly run by the city council in 1977: blue Bluestar buses, with different route numbers. 

I walked out onto the bridge, as far as its highest point in the centre. It seemed very high up, and I'm not happy at any kind of height, and the persistent wind and rain was very discouraging. But I wanted to see, and however daft it might look to passing cars and other people on foot, I wanted some photographs. The first shots look upriver.

Hmm. Largely given over to a marina, and various types of residential accommodation. The white structure (right edge) must be the St Mary's football stadium. I'm pretty sure there was a gasworks there once.

Downriver, it was much the same. Not much evidence of shipbuilding left! Only in the distance were there signs that Southampton remained a port for ocean-going ships.

By now I was getting rather soaked by the rain, and was feeling foolish for attempting pictures in such weather, and in such an uninspring location. But I did go as far as the centre point before turning back.

At the centre, the bridge was far above the river, and those safety-railings were none too high. It crossed my mind that leaning over to get a shot was not only scary, but might be misinterpreted. The bridge must be a magnet for anyone with suicide on their mind, especially on a dull, rainy day in late winter. I decided to put the camera away, and look like somebody thinking only cheerful thoughts. And indeed, I was by now looking forward to the warmth and dryness Sophie had to offer. 

It was no great surprise to pass things to make would-be suicides pause, and not carry through any plan to jump off the bridge:

It seems that life in Southampton can get unbearable for some. But then that must be true anywhere, if you have reached a dead end, or are too oppressed, and simply can't go on. Peace and contentment are not automatic, and not guaranteed. It must take a very special person (at, say, The Samaritans) to listen patiently and carefully to someone at the end of their tether, and by doing so bring them back from the brink. At Beachy Head, another high spot where people can throw themselves into oblivion, there is a proper 24/7 chaplaincy - housed in a permanent building, and complete with an official car, prominently marked - whose staff constantly look out for anyone contemplating suicide. I suppose there are certain tell-tale signs to watch for, and if they see them, they can make an approach. 

On reflection, I suppose potential suicides would never think of carrying a camera, and getting in a few shots, before doing the deed. So I was probably not actually in danger of being accosted by a concerned rescue team, or the police, as a person at risk. Even so, I'd hate to think I had been noticed and reported by passing cars or buses, and they had turned out, only to find me already gone. 

While up on the bridge I tried to see vestiges of the old Floating Bridge. Perhaps the former slipways were still there, but I couldn't tell. Redevelopment had almost totally obliterated what once had been. Southampton's Floating Bridge had receded into history.

This was not the only 'floating bridge' in my Photo Archive. I'll write a post about some others in the next post.

5G comes to my village

Since its launch some while back, 5G has been making steady progress. I see that 5G coverage with EE (my mobile phone service provider) has now reached the point where every city and most towns in the land can get it. Various country areas can as well, some of them rural tracts of no great population. Presumably this is to fill in the 'not spots' in the 4G network, so that if one's local 4G service is weak or non-existent, there is now the chance of 5G instead.

In my village - my part of it, anyway - I would have described the 4G service as 'quite good, but occasionally fading to poor'. It seems to depend on the weather: rainy conditions have generally meant a problematic 4G service. It also depends on the sensitivity of one's mobile phone. I'm finding that my larger, more powerful (and of course completely up-to-date) Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra can instantly grab a 4G signal in most parts of my house, which wasn't necessarily the case with my previous phone, a Samsung Galaxy S20+.

A good mobile phone service matters. Modern living demands good, reliable communications and, in particular, access to the Internet with one's phone. For the last four years I have relied completely on 4G to connect me to the Internet at home. It was early in 2020 when the broadband service I was subscribing to - then provided by BT - was cut off after heavy rain ruined the wiring and other equipment in a green roadside cabinet. It took a lot longer than a few days to fix. I contacted BT and they gave me a massive temporary increase in my 4G data allowance, so that I could get the Internet on my mobile phone without worrying about running out of paid-for data. 

They gave me 100GB for £25 a month, although I only paid £20 because of a £5 discount for having my broadband from BT. I made good use of that enhanced data allowance, and discovered that most of the time 4G was all I needed. I'd been a light broadband user: I was the only one in the house, and I didn't stream TV much, nor films, nor was I a gamer. The heaviest call on that 4G-based Internet was when -tethering the laptop to the phone - I uploaded photos to Flickr, composed photo-rich blog posts, or downloaded Windows updates. 

Essentially this was how it was when away in the caravan. I could usually do whatever I needed to when pitched in a farmer's field: why not then at home as well? Why pay for expensive broadband, when 4G was good enough for my usage? Suddenly it seemed daft to pay for two Internet services, especially as being away from home so much meant that I couldn't get full value from the broadband. Later in 2020 I cut my broadband contract and had my landline disconnected, intending henceforth to go completely wireless. 

I was conscious that it was something of a gamble. Would the local 4G signal remain adequate? Would my village ever get upgraded to 5G? On the other hand, I'd be saving around £30 a month. And there were things I could do to improve 4G reception in the house, such as buying a powered aerial/router for a window sill (which I could use in the caravan too), or even having an external aerial fixed to the chimney. 

Well, four years later the wireless-only gamble has worked out fine. My next door neighbours have been kind enough to let me tap into their unlimited broadband whenever I need to - there are occasional 4G outages - so I have an emergency Internet source. A privilege I don't abuse. Otherwise, I just use 4G, which has been good enough for watching the odd TV programme on my tethered laptop - even more so since upgrading to my S24 Ultra. 

But to make the experiment a complete success, I needed 5G. 

Well, a week ago EE sent a message to tell me that they wanted to carry out 'maintenance' at the local installation. Uh-oh. That probably meant several days without a 4G service. I was right. Initially they spoke soothingly of only a sixteen-hour outage. But it grew. Then they spoke of 'improvements'. Huh. That meant new equipment, and more delay for installation and testing. Still, EE might be boosting the 4G service. It turned out to be something better. 

Yesterday, early in the evening, and sitting in my lounge at home, I glanced at my phone and saw something I'd only seen when visiting large towns: the 4G symbol had been replaced by the one for 5G! 

Wow. At last. 5G here.

Granted, it was only a moderate 5G signal - I'm near the edge of the village - but this was something I hadn't really expected to see for several years yet. It meant that I would definitely never need to consider reconnecting/upgrading my landline and reinstalling broadband, and I could permanently keep my £30 a month saving (it's probably more now).

So the latest outage was worth enduring.

Is there a downside? I can't see one. If bad weather makes the 5G service wane, it defaults to 4G, which has been - as I said - adequate for most of the time.

I thought about whether it was a possible drawback not to have a modern fibre landline connected to the house. If I ever had to sell the house, the lack of a fibre landline might put off a potential buyer. Or would it? In any case (a) I have no plans to move, unless climate change forces me to (I'm thinking of unbearably hot summers); and (b) I could always pay to have the very latest type of installation as part of a pre-marketing decision. 

Meanwhile, I've got 160GB of data every month for £26.98, the new price after the annual hike. My old SIM-only contract with EE expired a long time ago, but I've let things run forward on a rolling basis. It's a lot of data for a reasonable monthly cost, and (importantly) it's supplied at EE's very best speed. I expect that one day they will ask me to move to a proper new contract with them, or leave. But until they do, I'm going to enjoy what I have.  

Big nibs at Newhaven - 2

It's late January 2024, and I've made a special point of seeing what the developer did with the former Parker Pen European management HQ and manufacturing site at Newhaven. I was in for a pleasant surprise.

I had thought that there would either be no link with the old use of the site, or merely a token reference to it - in the name of a road or building perhaps. I was expecting a series of industrial buildings in the modern 'warehouse' style. What I saw instead was a rather attractive affordable-housing estate - already fully occupied - nicely finished off with planting and green areas and some beautiful street furniture that went much further than strictly necessary to remind residents and visitors - and the town at large - that a nationally important factory had once existed here. I was impressed. 

I parked Sophie and walked around to take the place in.

I've passed over the entrance to the development for the moment - you'll soon see it. While driving in, and looking for a place to park, I noticed that I was on Parker Drive. And I passed street signs for Arrow Lane and Fountain Row.

Arrow Lane was obviously referencing the iconic arrow clip that Parker put, in one form or another, on all its pens. Fountain Row clearly brought to mind 'fountain pen'. And a bit further along was Sonnet Drive. 

The Sonnet was (and still is) a popular Parker fountain pen. 

Right where I was parked was an information panel that explained the timeline for the Parker Pen manufacturing here, and the aims of the development. Click on any of these shots to enlarge them.

They'd called the development Safford Park, in memory of Parker's founder in the nineteenth century. 

The estate was still new, and on the whole it seemed clear that its residents were being careful to keep it looking that way. 'Affordable housing' isn't actually cheap, and if you have paid a small fortune to own one of these modern housing units, there is an incentive to look after them. There was a variety of building styles. I especially liked the curving take on traditional terraced houses in Arrow Lane.

But the most enjoyable part was at the entrance. 

On each side of the road into the estate - Parker Drive - was a giant stainless-steel fountain pen nib, set on a white plinth, and roughly as tall as myself. 

These were embellishments of beauty. They were almost exactly what real nibs would look like (as on the Sonnet), except that they bore the text SAFFORD PARK. They were like nib-shaped mirrors. 

Behind each of these sentinels was a line of coloured bollards, in the form of giant pen caps - with, of course, the Parker arrow clip.

It was extraordinary. What a brilliant idea. And it was all much more than I had expected to see. 

But there's even more. I had a notion (from the information panel) that the giant stainless-steel nibs might be lit up in some way at night. The opportunity to go there after dark came up last week. I'd spent the day in Kent, with Romney Marsh my main objective, and I timed my departure for home so that I'd be passing through Newhaven well after sunset. As I turned into the estate, I thought I saw a blue glimmer from the two giant nibs. I parked as before, and walked back to take a close look.

Nothing was happening with the coloured pen caps. I walked on, stood next to that white van, and looked back.

Hmm. The giant nibs seemed to have a blue light inside them that - every few seconds - flared up, then died away. I got in close and took a series of shots at mid-flare.

I couldn't see what was producing the blue light, nor how it was able to grow brighter before waning. But it lit up a line of apertures around the base of the nib, as well as the SAFFORD PARK lettering. It was rather discreet illumination, all said. In any event, a very nice touch. 

Quite possibly this is the prettiest thing in Newhaven just now. I'm hoping that rival developments will try to cap it, so that bit by bit Newhaven becomes more attractive as a rather cool and chic place to live. I hear that the large quayside scrapyard further down the road is being moved to a bigger site on the Thames estuary, freeing up the land for fresh use. An opportunity then.